From rainy old Brooklyn to sunny Los Angeles, life has completely changed in the space of four weeks.
I won’t lie, some of it was pretty stressful. We had to find a place to live in California, and we only had one week to do it. We looked in Los Feliz and Silver Lake, but stuff was oddly expensive, then we took a chance on a place in Larchmont (never heard of it), right opposite Paramount Pictures. It was nice and luckily we got accepted. Only then did we find out that we were going to live in the house from the Sarah Silverman Program.
Back in New York, we packed up the contents of our apartment carefully over the course of three days, only to see the movers throw around the boxes with carefree abandon. I could practically hear the crunch of broken glass as they went about their merry way. Unbelievably, nothing we packed got broken (I was imagining opening a box of sand and glass), although the furniture they wrapped was utterly destroyed by the time it arrived. Nice job, guys.
We spent five days in an empty New York apartment with nothing but a confused cat and an air mattress to call our own. This part wasn’t stressful at all, it was kind of like camping, and as I’m English (we think we’re good in a crisis situation) the Dunkirk spirit kicked in I was ready to sing Run Rabbit Run and exchange my ration coupons for some powdered egg.
Then, the flight. Pretty much the most stressful thing ever is taking a one year old cat on a plane. Ripley (our cat) is a tough cookie, but my heart broke into a million pieces every time she cried in her carry case, which, incidentally, she’s too fat for. I felt guilty, scared, protective and sad in equal measures. It was unbearable. But we made it! She was running around the new place within half an hour of getting there, and once we got our furniture back, she was happy as a loon.
In short, as far as I can tell, Los Angeles is mind-numbingly amazing. No superlative can describe the positive effect the weather here has on a person. And the view of the hills in the distance does something to your psyche. You’re no longer closed in like you are in New York; you can relax at last. The two negative things you hear most about LA are that the people are weird and the traffic is bad. That has not been our experience at all, in either case. People have been ridiculously friendly (heck, even the DMV was a pleasant and relaxing experience) and admittedly, while we haven’t been driving much during rush hour, getting around has been super easy. Maybe it’s our location, but nothing is more than 20 minutes away. Heck, I would spend an hour on the subway getting from Brooklyn to Manhattan. This is heaven compared to that.
Things I’ve daydreamed about for ages like visiting Disneyland, eating Umami Burger and In-N-Out, going to the fancy malls, learning to drive, buying a car, seeing comedy at the The Groundlings, movies at the Arclight, yada, yada, yada, I’ve finally got to do. I’m sure the novelty will wear off, but right now it’s all exciting and new and fun. And not scary. California has welcomed us with open arms and I for one have allowed it to hug me close to its bosom.
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